Halloween and Religion

October 19, 2007

I can't believe it's nearly Halloween already! Our department at work is going to do "Alice in Wonderland." Fun idea, but it's been so long since I've even seen that movie, I can hardly remember any of the details. Debra and I are going to be Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Kathryn is going to be the Rabbit, Pamela is dressing as Alice, and Louise wants to be the Mad Hatter. If the guys will consent we want to dress them up as playing cards.

Joe and I are going to a Halloween party Friday the 26th, and I think I might try to do Evan Almighty. I'd just need a man's suit from the thrift store, fake hair and beard, white paint for bird poop, and pairs of little plastic animals hot-glued to the suit. It's an idea, anyway. Nathan says he just wants to give out candy this year. I think that's a good idea; we never eat all the candy he gets anyway! We still have a bowlful left over from last year and probably most of it needs thrown out.

We got into a discussion last night -- and I thought I'd told him all this already -- about how I and my siblings never had Christmas, birthday parties, trick-or-treating, even Easter. We started out talking about childhood toys (the earliest toys I remember were my teddy bear named Georgie Porgie, and my dolly named Thumbkins), then I said how my mother made those stuffed animals for us when we were young: Timothy, a purple elephant with yellow ears; Wanda, a red elephant with pink ears; me, Tuffy the Tooth; Sabrina & Melissa, that yellow giraffe they called "Mr. Mooney."

I said that she was quite creative in her day; she made curtains for that bookcase that we fashioned from an old dresser. She made appliqués from cookie-cutters and stitched them to the curtains. "Stars, hearts, gingerbread men, bells," I began, and Joe mentioned "Christmas trees..." I said, "Oh, no. We had nothing to do with Christmas trees. Those were PAGAN."

That's how the whole conversation started. He was dumbfounded with disbelief. "Really? REALLY? Wow. " he'd say. I told him we kept the Passover and the feasts and the holy days outlined in the Old Testament. So then he thought that we disregarded the New Testament. No, I said, we believed that even the NT Christians kept the OT holy days (at least that's how I understood it).

We talk pretty openly about religion. He asked me what I thought of his mom's church. It's a Baptist church; we went a couple months ago for the "going away" service/dinner for their pastor of 7 years. It was a small congregation, maybe 50-75 people, and it was mostly elderly people; not many teens or young couples with children. So that's what I said: "Seems like it's mostly elderly people that go to church anymore." His response: "They're studying for the Final Exam." Haha, how witty.